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Over Half A Million Macs Infected With “Flashback” Malware

Macs were supposed to be the virus-proof computers because, well, so relatively few people owned them globally. Then they got really popular and hackers figured there was finally a large enough number of Mac users to warrant attacks. Now, a piece of malware dubbed the “Flashback” trojan has grown to be a significant threat, infecting more than 600,000 Macs worldwide.

The trojan is distributed in one of two ways: either in a fake Adobe Flash plug-in installer (Steve Jobs was right) or through Java security holes. It then installs its code into the ‘Applications’ folder in ‘Finder,’ and proceeds to steal passwords and other personal information to a remote server.

Apple seems to be getting a handle on the problem, offering Java updates for OS X 10.6 and Lion that patch up the holes.